#25 - Ring Me With Your Schisms, Nick

The gaps between calls get shorter.

'Eating is out for me, this week,'
he asserts, breathy and effete.

I think he is trying to be sexy.
'Is this some pathetic attempt

to seduce me, Nicholas?' I say, affecting
a cod Parisian accent, 'or something more

sinister?' A dial tone before I reach
my last syllable. The clever bastard.

I trace the call to the apartment downstairs.
When I confront him, a man in a string vest

eating grilled mushrooms on toast,
he is unrepentant. 'I found an absolute truth once,'

he boasts. 'Light slid off it. It was slick
as a larded marble.'

The absolute truth, surely, I think,
and smirk at this small victory.